The Spectator

Barometer | 18 August 2016

Also in our Barometer column: Greenland’s economy, the Duke of Westminster and the Yorkshire Ripper

issue 20 August 2016

Four-letter surveys

A judge at Chelmsford Crown Court who was sworn at by a man she was sentencing to jail swore back at him from the bench. How common is swearing?

— A study in 1980 by Timothy Jay of the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts analysed 11,609 words of everyday conversation and found 70 taboo words — a rate of 0.

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